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Chasseur Barres

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Chasseur Barres
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Author(s): Jean-Baptiste Barres
Date Published: 12/2006
Page Count: 308
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-130-9
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-129-3

Chasseur Barres is a classic memoir of a French soldier of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Barres enlists in the ‘skirmishers’ of the Guard and dons the distinctive (and often despised) bearskin of his corps. From that point he embarks on a life of perpetual hard soldiering which takes him to most of the campaign theatres and many of the battlefields of the Napoleonic Age in the company of his Emperor. Barres’ first hand accounts of the battlefield, campaigning, Napoleon and the principal characters of the age make riveting reading. Those devoted to the history of these dynamic times will find much to interest and satisfy within the pages of this book.

2nd MayóLutzen. We marched off early in the morning, following the Leipzig highway. Reaching the high ground at the entrance to the plain of Lutzen the division drew up in column on the left of the road. On the horizon in front of us we saw the smoke of the enemy guns. Insensibly the sound grew louder and nearer proving that they were moving toward us. During this time the 2nd and 3rd divisions of our army corps: came up and formed in column behind us; the artillery, fixed its lashings and prepared to open fire. The whole Imperial Guard, which was behind, was moving by forced marches on Lutzen, following the high-road. At last we moved forward; our division was on the extreme right. In close column formation we went along the road and moved straight on the village, to the right of Strasiedel. On our left we passed the monument erected to the memory of the great Gustavus Adolphus, who was killed here in 1632. In front of Strasiedel we were saluted by the whole artillery of the enemy army and horribly cut up. Threatened by the cavalry we formed a square, and in this position received incessant charges which we always successfully repulsed. At the beginning of the action Colonel Henrion had his left epaulette carried away by a bullet and was forced to withdraw. Commandant Fabre took over the command of the regiment and was replaced by a captain. In less than half an hour I, the fifth captain of the battalion, found my turn had come to command it. At last, after three and a half to four hours of stubborn fighting, having lost half our officers and men and had our guns dismounted and ammunition caissons blown up, we retired in good order, at the march, as on parade, and went to take up our position behind the village of Strasiedel, without closing up our ranks too much. Major Fabre was admirable in this movement of withdrawal: what coolness, what presence of mind this uneducated man displayed! A little respite having been granted us, I saw that I was forty-three men short, and an officer, wounded in the head. I too was wounded in two places, but so slightly that I did not think of leaving the battlefield. One of these wounds was inflicted by the head of a sub-lieutenant, which had been hurled into my face. I was for a long time covered with my own blood and the brains of this nice young fellow, who, having left the Ecole Militaire two months before, said to us the previous day: ìAt thirty I shall be a colonel, or killed.î Forced to beat a retreat, I thought the battle lost, but an unattached major, having arrived the day before from Spain with at least a hundred others, reassured me, saying that on the contrary the battle was nearly won; that the 4th corps (Comte Bertrand) was debouching on our right behind the left wing of the enemy, and that the 5th corps (Comte Lauriston) was debouching on the extreme left, behind the enemyís right wing. After half an hourís repose the division again moved forward, passing again over the ground we had occupied so long and strewn with our dead. We found one of our adjutants, whose leg was broken by a grapeshot, taking cover in a furrow. For more than half an hour the cannonballs and bullets of the two armies had been going by over his head. When we had stood several cavalry charges and sustained several volleys of grape, one of which killed or wounded all our drummers and trumpeters, cut the majorís sabre in two and wounded his horse, the enemy withdrew without being pursued, as we had not the cavalry to follow on his heels. We bivouacked on the battlefield, formed in a square, so as to be prepared to repulse the enemy should he turn up during the night. This did indeed happen, but not to us. Our young conscripts behaved very well; not one left the ranks; on the contrary, some that we had left behind, sick, came to take their places. One of our buglers, a boy of sixteen, was of the number. He had a thigh carried away by a ball and died at the rear of the company. These poor children, when they were wounded but still able to walk, used to come to me to ask to leave the company to get their wounds dressed; it was a renunciation of life, a submission to their superiors, which touched one more than it astonished. My company was disorganized; it had lost half its sergeants and corporals; many of the muskets were broken by grapeshot; while the kettles, cooking-pots, shoulder-straps, tufts, etc., were lost.16th ñ 17th October, 1813óDuring the early hours of the forenoon we passed through a suburb of Leipzig, leaving the city on our right, making for the village of Holzhausen, where we had orders to report. Hardly had we arrived when the thousand guns in battery burst forth simultaneously. All the armies of northern Europe had met together on the ground about Leipzig. A general of the 11th army corps ordered us to move forward, toward a wood of some extent, and to dislodge the enemy therefrom. We were on the extreme left of the army. The wood was attacked by the six companies in six different places; owing to my place in the line of battle I found myself the most remote. Entering at once with my men as skirmishers, I soon dislodged the Austrian Croats whom I met there, but as I advanced I met with more resistance, and when my fire was hot there were very distinct shouts of: ìDonít fire, we are French.î Then, when I ceased fire, they fired on us. The wood was very dense; it was thick undergrowth in which you could see nothing ten paces off. No longer knowing with whom I had to deal, unable to make anything of this warning not to fire, with the air riddled with bullets, I advanced alone, with some precaution, toward the place from which these French voices came. I saw behind a ridge a battalion of Croats, who fired on me; but I had time to throw myself flat on my face, so that I was not hit. I shouted to my skirmishers to advance, and once surrounded by them I had the charge sounded. Then we advanced with more confidence, paying no further attention to the shouts of ìDonít fire!î for it was evident that it was some of our soldiers, prisoners, who were being compelled to speak thus. However, once someone called me by my name, shouting: ìTo me, Barres! Rescue!î We hastened our pace and I recaptured a captain of the battalion, with some Croats. At last I emerged from the wood, driving before me a hundred of the enemy, who were running away as fast as their legs could carry them across a plain to which we had come after this dense undergrowth. No enemies to our left, none in the plain, and, far away on my right, hell unchained; all the efforts and all the effects of a great battle. Having rallied all my skirmishers I marched on the village of Klein-Possna, occupied by some Austrians and Cossacks, who withdrew after a fusillade of less than fifteen minutes. Emboldened by this success, I passed the village on the heels of those I had driven out and saw on the other side, on the verge of a wood, a considerable force of the enemy. I was obliged to halt and hold myself on the defensive, I then had the village searched by some of my men, to obtain victuals, and waited for nightfall, which was approaching, to withdraw. My men having re-entered the village, I marched by my right toward the point where the fighting was proceeding and installed myself at the entrance to the village, in a meadow surrounded by hedges, at the branching of two roads. I had chosen this position because it safeguarded me against a night surprise, and I thought the battalion might perhaps come in that direction. Since the morning I had no means of knowing where it was. I had fought alone with my men all day and on my own initiative, without having seen a single superior officer. Before the night had quite fallen the divisional general, GÈrard, of the 15th corps, came to my bivouac. I reported to him what I had done and my reasons for taking up this position. He approved and told me to remain there. I asked him the result of the battle. He replied: ìYou see we are victorious here; I do not know what is happening elsewhere.î This day had cost me eight men wounded, one of whom was an officer. We were melting away day by day. When night had fallen the cavalry of this part of the army came to occupy the village I had taken. A few hours later, when the most absolute quiet seemed to prevail in the two armies, a brisk cannonade was heard and startled the men, quietly resting after the heavy exertions of the day. Suddenly awakened by the noise and by a shell which shattered three of my muskets, the men, numb with cold, and alarmed by so unexpected an impression, ran to their weapons. The cavalry did the same, so that the night we had so longed for was passed in dangers and alarms. The incident had no consequence, but the men and the horses lost the restorative sleep so necessary in such circumstances.
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